From protolanguage to language: model of a transition

Jean-Louis Dessalles (1, 2, 3)

1 Télécom ParisTech
2 INFRES - Département Informatique et Réseaux
3 LTCI - Laboratoire Traitement et Communication de l'Information

The existence of syntactic abilities allowing human beings to process complex languages remains mysterious. According to some authors, these abilities appeared by mere chance at some point in evolution, and their use in communication is, in some way, fortuitous. We try here to show how a simple model of the syntax-semantic interface allows us to consider a quite different scenario. The ability to process syntactic structures would have appeared in a two-step evolutionary process and would be the consequence of a new semantic ability, the ability to form predicates. Recursion is claimed to have appeared in the second step, as a way to link predicates for their arguments to be determined.

Mots clés: language; evolution; syntax

Domaines: Evolution [q-bio.PE]; Linguistique

Jean-Louis Dessalles. From protolanguage to language: model of a transition. Marges Linguistiques, 2006, 11, pp.142-152. ⟨hal-00614811⟩